Much of our work and leisure time now revolve around computer screens. Photograph: Ian Mckinnell

At a conference in Cannes eight years ago, I sat next to a producer who was working on an ambitious TV project about anthropology. We were both listening to a speech by a TV executive and I was in full conference flow, frenetically typing (badly) and flicking between emails. I must have been exhausting to sit next to, because at the end he turned to me with a mixture of weary astonishment and concern. “It’s not good for you to work like that,” he said. “Why don’t you just listen, and think about what he is saying?”

I very much felt that I had been listening – look at my reams of digital notes, my laptop hunch, my aching fingers. I couldn’t be working any harder! And there certainly weren’t any other journalists in the room kicking back and absorbing the atmosphere. “Have you ever tried meditation?” he asked me. I didn’t exactly dismiss what he said, but felt like meditation was something other people did, and I thought I was happy and fulfilling my obligations with my furious, restless output.

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It’s true that there is a relentlessness to journalism. It is an industry where words, ideas and reported truths are the grist for an insatiable, global industrial mill. But those stories rely on the creativity of individual journalists and editors – and a demanding and very pressurised environment is not conducive to either creativity or long-term good health. The same is true of many industries, of course, especially now that potential, opportunity and demand are all condensed around the screen. Yet rather than us deciding how to use digital technologies, the technology ends up shaping us, changing our lives and our working behaviour both in positive ways and less positive ways we could not foresee.

I called time on this creeping restlessness of technology back in January. Some commenters said I could just turn the technology off if it bothered me, but that’s not the point. We shouldn’t have to choose between being a digital hermit, isolated from the opportunity and the advantages of the world, just because maintaining a balance between connectedness and calm is so hard. I have practised meditation every day for 100 days. Given my natural restlessness and short attention span, this is a significant achievement for me. It’s extremely hard to make time for it between a heavy commute and the children, but I have managed to do this every day. I have been asked what difference it makes, and find it hard to answer; it’s intangible, subtle, complex. It’s a very small part of the day dedicated to acknowledging how I feel and where I am. It’s incredibly simple. It’s not a self-help CD or life coaching. It’s just a pause, before diving in to a demanding day.

We need to think of our mental health in the same way we do our physical health. We understand the stress and exhaustion of physical hard work, yet struggle to do the same for our psychological wellbeing. Similarly, our view of conditions such as depression and anxiety should acknowledge that mental wellbeing is a spectrum. It’s not a case of being labelled with a mental illness or not. We are all susceptible to stress, anxiety and exhaustion, which all too often lead to depression.

I take my mental health far more seriously now than when I was at that conference in Cannes. Exercise is a good release of tension, and meditation provides a space for release too. And I try to leave the office for lunch, not take my laptop home at night, and get back in time to put my kids to bed. I like long, difficult walks, and have a strict no-tech at the dinner table rule at home.

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The connection between technology use and mental health is anecdotal. Millions of people are empowered, enlightened and entertained through new technologies every day, but there is a cost to this connectedness, and at the very least the impossibility of escaping 24/7 work sets a poor precedent for a work-life balance.

I don’t believe we have to choose between being a technological philistine or an evangelist. There is a better position based on understanding and experiencing technology, and using it with personal responsibility and a touch of common sense.

I met a young woman recently who couldn’t stop smiling when telling me about her obsessive smartphone use, how her friends tease her about it, how she feels uncontrollably anxious when the battery is low and she is drifting closer to disconnection. She is ambitious, hard-working and full of enthusiasm for a job she loves.

I suggested buying an old-fashioned alarm clock so she could keep her phone in another room at night, and reminded her about the “do not disturb” mode, which mutes all but urgent calls. She was horror struck – about as horror struck as that producer in Cannes eight years ago. I thought it was just enthusiasm and hard work. I couldn’t see the inevitability of burning out after working so frenetically, but he could.